Hello great nexuser's!!!

I have a question to ask for my dog's friend who happens to be doing an extraction.

He is using powdered MHRB, Roebic's Crystal Drain Cleaner (100% NAoH), and VM&P Naphtha.

He is doing STB. He is using some very big glass jars to do it in. He used somewhere between 1500 and 1650 mL water (one jar tap water the other jar distilled)
He used 100g lye in jar one, and 106g lye in jar two.
He used 100g powdered MHRB in jar one, and 96g powdered MHRB in jar two.
He has been using anywhere from 150-250 mL naphtha for each pull.

He mixes the lye with water stirring slowly until it is ready. He adds the powdered MHRB, and swisheshed it around. He let this sit for a day until it looked completely broken down and like one aqueous solution. He then added his naphtha. For pull one he let it sit a day, for pull 2 he let it sit for two days, and for pull 3 he let it sit for three days.

On pull one he only got .020 out of each jar of some very pure white fluff (two very small doses)

on pull two he only got about .025 to .030 of the pure white fluff, and he has some of the yellowish gooey stuff stuck all over the bottom of one tray, which he has not weighed yet as he was letting it sit out hoping it would dry more.


He is now freeze precipitating one jar on pull three and evaporating one. He is hoping he will get a bit more as this seems no where near a 1% pull rate.

In the freeze precip jar though there seems to be a good bit of crystals but still no where near .2 it looks like.

Oh well he is going to pour the naphtha out and let the crystals dry and see if anything comes out of the evaporated naphtha.

Does anyone have any idea why so far this seems like it will come no where near to 1%? I dont think he is even going to get .5 %.

Kind of disappointing but still worth it.

how cold is it out? SWIM's naptha, ronsonol, only holds about 20-30mg at room temp in 50-100ml, as soon as it is luke warm though it goes up A LOT.

that is the only thing he can think of, heat it, hotter the better

Well we are in the south but it is winter so...

It has been cold as hell freezing outside and stuff...

You might be onto something there...

150-250 mL per pull sounds kind of excessive for ~100g of bark. Try using around 50mL of solvent for that amount, or evaporate your pulls until the naphtha becomes cloudy when blown at (someone here posted a neat video illustrating the process - http://dmt-nexus.me/foru....aspx?g=posts&t=7545). Otherwise, reuse the naphtha for subsequent pulls and evaporate the last one (although this will probably increase the chances of pulling useless stuff like plant oils).

Got you. Sounds like great advice he should follow...

His problem is his utensils. He has some big glass jars and makes the naphtha pulls with a turkey baster. So 50 mL compared to what he has right now seems like its going to be awfully hard to pull out with a turkey baster since the surface area of his jar is kind of big...

So he should be freeze precipping every pull then huh, and reusing naphtha with this method.

So really he needs to buy a separatory funnel or something to make using less naphtha easier I guess... Does this sound about right?

Thanks for the help friend!

Haha, yes, big jars and a turkey baster sound familiar. A cheaper (albeit more time-consuming, but only slightly) solution, rather than using a separatory funnel, would be to use an intermediary vessel. Just try to suck up as much naphtha as you can, without worrying too much about pulling the aqueous solution, and dump it into a narrower vessel (a bottle or glass or some sort). Then properly separate the naphtha from whatever water+lye you might have pulled the first time.

I've also heard that a gravy separator may work well for this kind of task.